Title: When Life is Troubling
Text: Job 1:1 and 2:1-10
Thesis: Disasters and personal tragedies may be cause for doubt, but they may also be cause for trusting God..
The story of an innocent religious person who endures grievous suffering and emerges from that experience scathed, but with his faith intact.
Introduction
The symbol of American ethics is Lady Justice: She wears a blindfold as she weights the law on her impartial sale. Yet, life isn’t fair.
I was amused this week when I read about the tax plan of one of the leading presidential candidates. It was a plan that boasted something for everyone… everyone got a tax cut. However a closer reading indicated that some would receive greater tax breaks than others. It reminded me of the old adage: Everyone is created equal but some are more equal than others. Life isn’t fair.
On the African Serengeti the wildebeest get to eat grass but practically everything else… the lion, hyena, cheetah and the crocodile, get to eat them. I doubt the wildebeest thinks that is fair.
An article posted on online Forbes several years ago put it, “Life Isn’t Fair – Deal With It.”
At first glance it seems our text is about a man who experienced the unfairness of life. We begin with this premise:
I. Neither suffering nor blessing are necessarily deserved, Job 2:10
Everyone knows good people experience bad things and bad people experience good things.
We have no control over our origins. We are born into a set of circumstances and that is that. However we believe that we do have control over the outcomes in our lives. We overcome obstacles and challenges. We make choices that influence and determine what we achieve and attain. That is only fair.
Recently Pittsburgh Steeler linebacker James Harrison came home to find that his 6 and 8 year old sons had been given participation trophies, which he promptly returned. That father is convinced that participation awards make a child feel entitled just for having participated.
You could surmise then that fairness is an entitlement concept… everyone participates so everyone gets a trophy. It’s only fair. However that father believes the one who works hardest and achieves the most is more deserving than the one who does not. That’s fair.
The main character in our text today was one of those deserving kinds of guys for whom life had been fair. He had worked hard. He was a good father. He was a good and God-fearing man. He deserved what he had… that was only fair.
A. Job was Deserving, Job 1:1-5
“There once was a man… he was blameless, a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil.” Job 1:1 and 8
Job was…
1. Blameless
2. Ten children
3. Massive herds of livestock
4. Many servants
5. Richest man in the entire area
Job was a deserving man. Life was fair for Job. There is an implied relationship between blessing and obedience. The amount of blessing Job receives seems to be directly proportional to the amount of obedience he offers to God. Job was good for God and God was good to Job.
Beginning with verse 6 in our text, a rather bizarre conversation took place between God and the Accuser, Satan. There is some kind of meeting between God and heavenly beings… among them was Satan. God asked Satan what he had been up to and Satan said he had just been patrolling the earth. We assume he was looking for someone to mess with. Amazingly, God asked him if he had noticed what a good and godly man Job was.
Which raised the question…
Did Job (and do people) believe or trust God without regard for either reward or punishment as a result of their faith? Satan posed the question, “Does Job fear God for nothing?” Or “Job has good reason to fear you God. You have always put a wall of protection around him…” Job 1:9-10
In verse 6 there is a radical shift from the Job who was deserving of all the good that come into his life to the Job who did not deserve all the bad that came into his life.
B. Undeserving, Job 1:6-22; 2:1-9
“Alright, you may test him. Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, but don’t harm him physically.” So Satan left the Lord’s presence. Job 1:12
Job had three friends, Eliphaz, Bildad and Zopahr who came to comfort him when he lost everything. They wasted no time in informing Job that the innocent do not suffer. They told him that he was in fact undeserving of the good things in life and therefore it was only fair that those things be taken away. He lost:
1. His possessions, Job 1:6-17
“Alright, you may test him. Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, but don’t harm him physically.” So Satan left the Lord’s presence. Job 1:12
On Tuesday, September 8th, 2015, a British Airways jet caught fire at the Las Vegas airport, sending smoke billowing into the air, after suffering what the pilot described as a "catastrophic failure" of the left engine. The plane—a Boeing 777 heading from the U.S. city's McCarran airport to London Gatwick—could be seen with flames around its fuselage.
The pictures of a burning jetliner in Las Vegas were certainly riveting. But as the plane burst into smoke and flames, some observers saw something even more startling: People stopped during their evacuation to grab their luggage. Authorities are certainly concerned about planes that burst into flames, but they're also worried that we'd risk our lives to grab our carry-on bags.
So what's the big deal with grabbing one carry-on bag? The FAA requires planes to be evacuated within 90 seconds, but as a Chicago-based air traffic controller wrote:
Let's say the average delay time per bag is 5 seconds. This includes the time needed to reach up to open the overhead compartment, pulling the bag down, and the extra delay hauling it through a crowded aisle. If half of the 170 people on board Flight 2276 took the time to take their bag the evacuation would have taken an additional 7 MINUTES longer than necessary. Imagine being the last one to exit the smoke-filled cabin knowing that your one minute evac time is now over 7 minutes!
One veteran pilot with a major U.S. airline said, "We're always shaking our head. It doesn't matter what you say, people are going to do what they do." Or as one blogger summarized this news story: "People love their carry-ons more than life itself." (Justin Pritchard and Sally Ho, "Vegas Plane Fire Passengers Escaped With Lives—And Bags," Associated Press (9-12-15); Bob Collins, "People love their carry-ons more than life itself," NewsCut (9-11-15)
People do not want to lose their luggage much less everything they own and everyone they love.
2. His Children, Job 1:18-19
All this happened without warning. There was no explanation… just disaster upon disaster.
Can you imagine? One of the recurring fears I had following the death of our son was the possibility of losing another child. I reasoned, “If I can lose one child then I can lose another and if I can lose another, I can lose another…” Can you imagine the unimaginable grief of the loss of ten children?
Chapter 2 begins with a second meeting which is very much like the first. Once again we get a glimpse of the scene playing out in heaven and as a result, Job lost his health.
3. His health, Job 2:1-8
There is a growing trend called “Concierge Medicine.” Dr. Cheryl Bryant-Bruce, founder of Elite Personal Physicians, Inc., carries a maximum of 20 patient families who retain her services for a $150,000 per-patient family package.
Wealthy people want and will pay for preferential, day or night medical care with U.S. Emergency room grade equipment installed in their homes. Some of the rich have what are called Ready Rooms in their homes, yachts and planes equipped with X-ray machines, CT scanners, ultrasounds and blood-analysis technology.
We will spend everything we have to stay alive as long as we can… that was a fact not unknown to Satan. “Of course Job reverences you God… a man will spend everything he has to save his own life, but if you take away his health he will curse you to your face.” Job 2:4
And if his losses were not great enough. He lost his wife’s support.
4. His wife’s respect, Job 2:9
Keeping in mind that Job’s wife had experienced the same losses as well as watching her husband withering away and about to likely leave her a penniless widow, she lost her cool and blurted out, “Are you still trying to maintain your integrity? Curse God and die!” Job 2:9
Throughout this text Satan was getting at what Richard Dawkins calls, The Selfish Gene, or the drive to survive. Dog eat dog gene. The lookout for number one gene. Satan believed that Job’s piety was based on believing that as long as he was a good and godly guy God would continue to bless his life. Satan believed that if take everything away from a person… that person will take leave of his faith.
But God is not cynical. God believes faith and hope in a loving God is more powerful than suffering and despair. God believes Job is faithful because he trusts in the goodness of God.
I’ve noticed that WIFI services are kind of fritzy sometimes. Sometimes the signal is strong and other times it fades in and out. In our building reception is better in some parts of the facility than in other parts.
A genuine faith is not fritzy. It does not fade in and out. A genuine faith has a strong signal throughout.
II. Faithfulness to God is critical in both good times and bad times
The fact that Job was having a bad day, did not mean Satan was winning. God was winning, so to speak. God was glorified because Job did not cave under pressure. Job’s strength was in trusting God through it all.
Job believed two things.
A. God is sovereign, Job 1:21-22
“The Lord gave me everything I had, and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord!” Job 1:21-22
As God, God can do whatever God wishes to do and I am willing to trust God in and through the best and the worst of it.
Job also understood that God is mysterious.
B. God is mysterious, Job 2:10
“Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” Job 2:10
Who knows how God thinks? Woy knows why God allows what God allows? Who knows why God lets things happen the way they do?
In Isaiah God says, “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts. And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55: 8-9
Barbara Brown-Taylor tells of an experience she had while spending a few days on a barrier island where loggerhead turtles were laying their eggs. One night while the tide was out, she watched a huge female heave herself up the beach to dig her nest and lay her eggs. Afraid of disturbing her, she left before she had finished her work but returned next morning to see if I could find the spot where her eggs lay hidden in the sand. Then she saw that her tracks led in the wrong direction. Instead of heading back out to sea, she had wandered into the dunes.
A little ways inland she found the turtle, exhausted and all but baked, her head and flippers caked with dried sand. She said she went to find a park ranger, who returned with a jeep to rescue her. She watched in horror as the park ranger flipped her over on her back, wrapped tire chains around her front legs, and hooked the chains to the trailer hitch on his jeep. Then he took off, yanking her body forward so fast that her open mouth filled with sand and then disappeared underneath her as her neck bent so far I feared it would break.
The ranger hauled her over the dunes and down onto the beach. At ocean's edge, he unhooked her and turned her right side up again. She lay motionless in the surf as the water lapped at her body, washing the sand from her eyes and making her skin shine again.
Then a particularly large wave broke over her, and she lifted her head slightly, moving her back legs as she did. As I watched, she revived. Every fresh wave brought her life back to her until one of them made her light enough to find a foothold and push off, back into the water that was her home.
Watching her swim slowly away and remembering her nightmare ride through the dunes, Barbara noted that it is sometimes hard to tell whether you are being killed or being saved by the hands that turn your life upside down. (Barbara Brown Taylor, "Preaching the Terrors," The Art & Craft of Biblical Preaching (Zondervan, 2005)
The question for us becomes, “Can we trust in God’s sovereignty despite our lives being turned upside down?”
Conclusion
From The Silver Chair, the 4th book in the Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, there is a girl named Jill who found herself transported to the land of Aslan. She is stranded and alone. She is thirsty. She happened upon a stream but there was a mighty lion named Aslan lying by the stream.
When Aslan spoke it was a thunderous voice inviting her to come to the stream and drink.
Jill responded, “Would you mind going away while I come to drink? The lion answered with a look and a very low growl… the lion was not going to go away.
She could hear the sound of the stream water rippling over stones and desperate for a drink she asked, “If I do come and get a drink do you promise you will not do anything to me?”
“No… I make no promises said the lion.”
“Well then, I dare not come for a drink,” she replied.
“Then you will die of thirst,” said the lion.
“Then I suppose I must go and look for another stream then…” and Aslan said, “There is no other stream.”
“There is no other stream.”
This text speaks clearly of two things:
1. God believed in Job.
2. Job believed in God.
Job knew there was no other stream but Almighty God… who believes in us and in whom we may entrust our lives.
